This invention relates to an angler's kit and method of producing personalized fishing lures. More specifically, this invention relates to a kit and method to enable an angler to use his/her personal perceptions, experience and intuition to produce a variety of fishing lures with body tendrils or body and tail tendrils designed to optimize the angler's personal fishing experience. The invention is directed to addressing an angler's preferences in terms of color, reflectivity, glitter, texture, density, flexibility, patterns, etc. of fishing lures with skirts which in an individual angler's opinion will be most suitable for a specific environment out of a universe of envisioned fishing conditions. Variable conditions include; but are not limited to, sunlight, shadows, water color and/or clarity, seasonal conditions that affect fish activity, functional activity of a lure in the water, and other considerations that in an angler's personal opinion will optimize the angler's fishing experience. Although the subject invention has worthwhile application when angling for various fish varieties, such as , for example, northern pike and muskie, it is envisioned that the subject invention is particularly useful to enhance an angler's fishing experience for black bass.
The most common lures for bass fishing are plugs, plastics and wire baits. Plugs are mostly made of hard plastic and include hollow components. They are typically shaped like bait fish with double or treble hooks hanging from the lure belly. Some dive and others stay on the surface of the water and when reeled in jerk or wiggle. The variations available for such lures are virtually endless through personalized preference for color, size, and type of wiggle. For plastics, the lure bodies are typically composed from a soft rubbery composition of pliable plastic. A hook is inserted into the plastic and a sinker (lead weight) can be used to vertically orient the lure in water. Depending on where an angler positions a hook and sinker and how the angler positions the plastic with respect to the hook(s) will effectively create a distinctive type of rig. Some previously known popular rigs are known as: a Texas rig, a drop shot rig, a Carolina rig, and a wacky rig, to name a few. Plastic body components are also shaped in the configuration of worms, frogs, lizards, crayfish, small fish, and every kind of aquatic creature that lives in freshwater that is a natural food for bass.
In addition to lures as noted above, bass fisherman often prefer wire baits made from a combination of a small fish head and slender body distal to the head segment that usually terminates in a single bass hook—although multiple hooks are also well known. A wire bait is often enhanced with a parallel spinner of various designs such as single or double Colorado spinners, double willow or tandem designs that spin or vibrate to attract fish to a lure. Spinner designs have been created to affect the depth of action of a lure, how smoothly the lure pulls through the water, and in certain designs creating a degree of noise to attract fish. Wire baits consist of buzzbaits (a bait that runs on the top of the water and makes a splashy wake), Chatterbaits®, (a bait that runs under the water and wiggles), and spinnerbait (that has rotating blade action in the water).
In addition to a bait fish head, spinner and bait fish body with a single hook, a wire bait is usually fitted with a skirt body and often an elongated skirt tail of fine silicone tendrils that cover a hook or hook and trailer hook. In the past angler supply sources have produced and made available to the public a wide variety of skirt designs, colors, textures and patterns which are marketed in bundles held together in a center section of the bundle by an elastomeric band. One commercial source of such ready make skirts is the Bass Pro Shops located in Springfield, Mo.
Alternatively an angler can make his/her own fishing lure skirts by purchasing tab sets which are composed of a thin silicone material approximately five inches in length and an inch or so in width with fused ends and a center portion slit into fine parallel tendrils of twenty two or so per tab set. Elastomeric tab sets are commercially available in a wide variety of solid colors, solid colors with glitter, tabs that enhance color when the sun is shining and others where the sun is not present, ones with vertical barbed wire looking strips, ones with stripes in a middle portion and spots at the ends, ones with color in the middle half and a different color at the ends, glitter on both sides, ones with fish scale patterns, ones with vertical glitter bars, ones with two or three different vertical colored stripes in a pattern (viz. brown, green, orange, chartreuse, and so on), ones with spots or fish scales in a chrome foil color. Sometimes bass skirt tabs have a combination of the above described features, even in one set of twenty two tendrils. Such fishing lure tendril tab sets are commercially available from a variety of supply houses, recreational fisherman catalogues, and online, at www.fishingskirts.com; www.barlowstackle.com; www.basspro.com; www.lurepartsonline.com; as examples, with literally hundreds of different skirt tab sets to choose form.
Although a wide variety of skirt body and tail tendril combination fishing lures are produced commercially, anglers often prefer to select and produce their own design combinations based on personal experience and perceived optimum bass preferences for a wide variety of environmental conditions. Skirt tab strips, however, are typically composed of thin flexible silicone tendrils of twenty two strands that are fused at each end into a single tab set that is relatively easy to handle. Individual pairs of fine tendril strips can be cut off of a single tab to make various combinations of tendrils, however, individual tendril pairs tend to be thin, flexible and a challenge to handle and form into an effective and desirable fishing lure skirt. As noted above, commercially produced fishing lure skirts are available but they lack the personalized aspect of a fishing lure that is an integral part of a satisfying angling experience. (“My spinnerbait lure with personalized body and/or tail tendrils is the best and was my personal design.”)
Accordingly, it would be highly desirable to provide a kit and method of use for individual anglers to personalize their own skirt designs while using commercially available silicone, skirt tab sets where individual, thin, tendril pairs can be used to build up a varied and sophisticated skirt set for a personalized skit body, as well as a skirt body and tail combination, of color, glitter, pattern, density, etc. Such personalized skirts can then be operably joined with a spinnerbait or buzzbait body and hook, as an example, to produce a completed personalized lure.
Simple skirt production tools exist that function to produce a bundle of skirt tendrils simply held together by a central band, however, tools known in the past lack a desirable level of sophistication necessary to enable an individual angler to efficiently visualize and produce an effective fishing lure product. Even an angler with a substantial degree of experience often has trouble producing skirt sets for spinnerbait and buzzbait applications that enables optimum use of a variety of colored tendril strands, designs, textures, and lengths to make a skirt body of a fish lure covering a hook or a combination of a skirt body and tail design effective for a given fishing situation. In this, individual silicone tendril strips or fine silicone pairs are difficult to manually handle, maneuver and visually place in a pattern that emulates a bait fish with respect to color, texture, glitter, number of strands, etc. Still further, tail tendrils of a suitable length and design variety utilizing individual strand pairs from a wide variety of commercially available, silicone tab sets can be challenging and problematic to visualize and assemble.
Although producing an effective fishing lure is more a matter of preference, experience and intuition than science clear water colors that match what bass are eating is often effective. In lightly stained water adding some skirt strands of chartreuse is often a good option. In darker stained water mostly black and dark blue strands often produce good results. On sunny days use of a skirt with glitter can be effective while on a darker day solid colors often seem easier for fish to see, etc.
Creating a personalized optimum fish lure with a body skirt or a body skirt and tail combination, out of a huge universe of possibilities, can be a never ending quest. In certain respects creation of the perfect fish lure skirt for a particular environmental condition is a not insignificant part of a desirable angling experience.
The limitations and desires noted in the preceding are not intended to be exhaustive but rather are among many which may tend to reduce the effectiveness, reliability and angler satisfaction with producing personalized fishing lure skirt bodies and fishing lure skirt bodies with tails. Other noteworthy problems may also exist; however, those presented above should be sufficient to demonstrate that personalized production of fishing lures, with unique personalized skirt designs suitable to an individual angler's preferences, appearing in the past will admit to worthwhile improvement.